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[Waddy]

Hi,

I've been planning a whole house audio & video set up for some time.  We're due to start our house renovation next spring so I've moved onto getting a few pieces together to try things out.  I'm tying to implement a very centralised system with just the screens and speakers in the rooms.  Control will be PPC/Netremote or remote controls for simple on/off up/down i.e. no fixed installation (keypads).  I'm also probably going to go with a single cable type for everything (CAT5e) including the speakers - it looks like the sound quality is OK and it will allow more flexibility for future changes.

This forum has provided lots of ideas and guidance, particularly on the audio aspects, and as a
I've got the trial versions of MC, Girder & Netremote along with an m-audio delta 410 sound card (if these work out I may buy another).  The set up was fairly straight forward to "bench test" the multi-zone audio. 

The two main areas I haven't got sorted yet are: amplifier/switch and video solution.  I think the solution to these two may be interdependent.

I don't need HD quality yet since I don't have any HD sources but I would definitely upgrade in the future and don't want to start again with the video solution.

I wondered if there was any examples of muti-zone video solutions out there based on or compatible with the PC/MC/Netremote. The various thoughts I've had are:
1) buy an (expensive) AV switch - seems like a good solution but the costs are prohibitive.
2) buy several PCs to act as media clients per zone - seems overkill and I'd end up placing them all centrally anyway.
3) buy several media players - not convinced by the quality of any of these and again they'd all end up next to each other.
4) solution that allows several video outputs from one PC - not sure whether there is such a thing as a PCI switch?? or mutiple video cards.
 
The forth option is the one where things get very hazy
a) how do you get multiple video routed to separate outputs
b) would a multi-monitor set up allow independent video and control

I've been looking at the Russound CAV as an option for the amplification - would this work without the keypads?

Apologies for the stream of questions but I've been reading the various postings and can't find anything directly relevant.  I'd appreciate any do's & don't and what may work for me and what definitely doesn't work. 

Thanks

[glynor]

You may want to read this thread here (if you haven't already):  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=42936.0

MC is very adept at using multiple monitors, and it remembers detached display settings on a per-zone basis (full-screen or not, position, size, and which monitor are all remembered).  However... For performance and ease of use, I would strongly recommend considering installing multiple PCs in each place where you want video terminals and running MC locally on those machines.  Multi-room audio distribution will work perfectly off of the central server.  For video, you're going to end up needing to build a god-machine, and even then, running multiple videos in separate rooms is going to cause performance issues (especially if you decide to ever get into HD video sources).

Where instead, a small 15" or 17" touchscreen running either Netremote or MC's Theater View in each room, then also connected to a nice big LCD/Plasma HDTV, is going to be sweet.  You don't need big or powerful machines in each room.  Simply something to run MC, girder, and maybe Netremote.  The file storage can certainly be on your central machine that does the audio distribution for the non-video-equipped rooms, so these remote machines just need to be "terminals".  Any reasonably-equipped PC will probably do it, so I'd look at form-factor (small and quiet).  One nice little bonus is that JRiver lets you use the same license for MC on multiple machines (so long as you own them all and don't abuse the privilege), so you only need one "copy" of MC anyway!

Other problems I see with distributing video from a central server (other than performance):

1. Video cable lengths.  VGA is limited to 20' - 30' after which you'll end up needing to buy distribution amps.  Using baluns can compromise video quality, especially with long cat5 runs.  You're essentially almost just as length limited with them, though they do give you a bit longer distance (not terribly much though).

2. Input cables.  If you need to direct-connect any input devices to the central server, you could run into length issues again.  USB is tough to extend.  Even the "active" extension cables are usually limited to 80-90' max.

3. Incredibly complex control will be needed to properly route video to each room.  You won't be able to use MC's Theater View (see the thread I linked to above) and recreating it's functionality in Netremote may be an exercise in frustration.  Even if you succeed, they're sure to add new features to MC and Theater View which you'll end up missing out on (they release new public builds of MC with new features almost weekly).

[Waddy]

Thanks for the pointers - I hadn't seen the other post despite trying lots of searches.

The set up looks easy enough with the detached displays & zones - but like you say it takes a lot of processing and you've still got to push the signal quite a distance over cat5 with baluns.

However, I don't really want to end up putting PCs in every TV room.

If I do go down that route - I have one query (well to start with anyway) - I would probably still have a centralised audio PC with the m-audio 410 so I could synch at least adjacent zones.  I would want to play audio from this machine in most (if not all) zones and only use the local machine for video (and associated audio).  Could I set up a single theatre style view that would handle this?

[Waddy]

Whilst you're all thinking about the last question regarding audio synchronisation - I have another for you:

With several PCs all running separate instances of MC - how do I control and access the output from items such as satellite box & TV tuner cards connected to just one of the PCs? I've read that Media Server is not very good at "streaming" since it actually transfers the whole file first - I guess that's good from a playback performance point of view but not good to have to wait for the whole transfer.

Thanks

[glynor]

Could I set up a single theatre style view that would handle this?

I haven't really experimented with Theater View using Zones at all myself.  However, if you are inside Theater View, you hit the "Show Controls" button, it does provide you with a button for each zone, allowing you to switch between them.

Of course, MC does also provide a whole wealth of automation commands that can be used with Girder and Netremote, and Zones can certainly be controlled that way as well.

[glynor]

With several PCs all running separate instances of MC - how do I control and access the output from items such as satellite box & TV tuner cards connected to just one of the PCs?

I'm not clear on exactly what you want to know... Could you describe your setup in more detail?  More along the lines of: I have computer (A) which is connected to these specific devices, and I want to view this on computer (A) and this on computer (B) and so on and so forth.

(I doubt I'll be much help but others might be if you describe it better.)

[Waddy]

Bear in mind that I really wanted to come up with a fully centralised equipment model (apart from screens & speakers).  However,  I take your earlier points about the difficulties in terms of processing power and output distribution so..

I've been trying to understand how a setup would work with a central media server (or maybe 2 - one for audio and one for a/v).

For example:

I have computer A in the main "machine room" it has a couple of freeview TV tuners and a sky box attached. 

I have computer B in the "machine room" running MC for audio to several zones

I have computer C in the lounge with a TV screen attached and

Computer D in the kitchen with a TV screen attached.   

Objective:
From computers C & D I want to be able to:
access sky & freeview TV + recorded programmes and also schedule TV recordings & timeshift AND
control computer B if I want to listen to audion only

Ideally all through a single interface (MC?) but I'm also happy using Girder & Netremote if required.

I hope that's a little clearer.

[Waddy]

Glynor,

My other problem with the video playback is more important but that does not look like an MC problem.

I'd like to try some of the ideas out for this multi-zone video before my trial license expires in a few days (10 I think).

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[glynor]

I don't know the answer to a lot of your questions, but I'll try to get you a more detailed answer a little later today.

[Waddy]

Any thoughts?

[Yaobing]

Bear in mind that I really wanted to come up with a fully centralised equipment model (apart from screens & speakers).  However,  I take your earlier points about the difficulties in terms of processing power and output distribution so..

I've been trying to understand how a setup would work with a central media server (or maybe 2 - one for audio and one for a/v).

For example:

I have computer A in the main "machine room" it has a couple of freeview TV tuners and a sky box attached. 

I have computer B in the "machine room" running MC for audio to several zones

I have computer C in the lounge with a TV screen attached and

Computer D in the kitchen with a TV screen attached.   

Objective:
From computers C & D I want to be able to:
access sky & freeview TV + recorded programmes and also schedule TV recordings & timeshift AND
control computer B if I want to listen to audion only

Ideally all through a single interface (MC?) but I'm also happy using Girder & Netremote if required.

I hope that's a little clearer.

You can run Library Server on computer A, tune to a TV channel, and put it in Time-Shifting mode (pressing Pause button for example).

From computers C and D, connect to Library Server on computer A, go to Videos and look for media type jts. Play and watch TV that is being streamed from computer A.

[Waddy]

Thanks.  Would this work for multiple channels/streams so that computer C & D can view different programmes simultaneously?

[Yaobing]

It is limited to the TV tuner devices you have (and the CPU and hard drive speed) on your server machine. One tuner device can only tune to one channel at a given moment. Therefore if you have only one TV tuner card on computer A, then you can only watch the TV programs from the same channel on computer C and D. However, you can watch different programming of the same channel (live show on computer C, a show 5 hours ago on computer D for example).